Chris Watson - Whispering in the Leaves

Whispering in the Leaves

A major new sound installation at Sunderland Museum & Winter Gardens
Presented as part of AV Festival 08: 29th February – 9th March 2008

Artists’ Talk & Desert Island TV: Sat 8 Mar, 2.30 -3.30pm
Chris Watson discusses his new work Whispering in the Leaves. The talk will be followed by Desert Island TV, where Chris will introduce and screen BBC nature documentary the Life of Birds made with David Attenborough. Free, for bookings contact info@avfestival.co.uk

For AV Festival 08, Watson has created a powerful new sound work derived from his extensive archive of wildlife and on location recordings in Central and South America - habitats that host over half of the planet’s wildlife. Diffused through the tropical foliage of the enclosed botanical environment of the Winter Gardens, which is home to over 2,000 flowers and plants, the surround soundtrack of wildlife dawn and dusk choruses will be transmitted at hourly intervals throughout the day for 15-20 minute durations – the approximate time taken in the rainforest for the transitions from darkness into light, and from daylight to dark. The sound pieces feature the calls and voices of thousands of species, including the howls and shrieks of black howler and spider monkeys, the musicality of diverse birdsong and the shimmering and hissing of tree frogs and cicadas. A highly sensory and captivating experience, Whispering in the Leaves is a remarkable demonstration of the power of sound recordings and natural history broadcast to transport us to far flung, inaccessible and often extraordinary locations.